Caught On Tape Doesn’t Seem to Matter
Yesterday on the campaign trail, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, “unmoved by the evidence‚” continued to push the theory that 380 tons of munitions had been moved from the Al Qaqaa facility prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Cheney quoted a former commander who said “I suspect he [Saddam] had already moved it and moved it out into the desert someplace.” But a tape shot 4/18/03, well after the fall of Baghdad‚ by a Minnesota news crew “appeared to confirm…that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives..had vanished from the [Al Qaqaa] site after the invasion of Iraq.” Weapons experts who reviewed the tape “say the videotape appears identical to photographs that the inspectors took of the explosives, which were put under seal before the war.” An expert familiar with the site said “the videotape and some of the agency’s photographs of the HMX stockpiles ‘were such good matches it looked like they were taken by the same camera on the same day.'” David Kay, the Bush administration’s former weapons inspector, said the images on the tape “are consistent with what I know of Al Qaqaa.” Kay said the photos were “game, set and match” on the question of whether the explosives were there after the invasion. (See the video for yourself here and here).